[Film Review] Destry Rides Again (1939) 7.1/10
George Marshall’s DESTRY RIDE AGAIN starts as a revisionist western, pitting Tom Destry, Jr. (Stewart), a new deputy sherif in the fictive town of Bottleneck, who unconventionally cleaves to law and order, in lieu of the default trigger-happy lethality, as the means to apply his remit, against the vile saloon owner Kent (Donlevy), and stuck in between is Frenchie (Dietrich), the saloon’s artiste and Kent’s girlfriend, whose moral compass begins to swerve after being impressed by Tom’s gallantry and sense of justice.
Corruption firmly holds sway over the town, with the tobacco-chewing mayor Slade (Hinds) in cahoots with Kent’s gang, it is up to the new sherif Dimsdale (Winninger), a hardened soak who was once the deputy of Destry, Sr., surprisingly emanates great determination to root out the local vice, and recruits Destry, Jr. as his helpmate, yet is wrong-footed by the latter’s non-violent tenet. Much of the comedic diversion derives from the rumbustious saloon commotions - including a drawn-out cat fight between Frenchie and Mrs. Callahan (a spitfire Merkel), both ladies go for it without any stunt doubles, and Frenchie’s hysterical paroxysm of hurling any objects she can lay her hands on - and Frenchie’s earthy, humorous ditties that are squarely in Dietrich’s contralto element, counting two Frank Loesser instant classics.
But the farce soon fizzles out as the film takes an about-face when what Tom espouses fails to vanquish the opposition he faces, he can outwit Kent in a heart beat, but when the ruffians go desperate and dangerously reckless, he has no other choice but exercising a tit-for-tat maneuver to weed out the canker once and for all, which betrays the ugliness and nastiness of the wild wild west, so the revisionist stance may be just a put-on, a man must be a sharpshooter himself in order to totally renounce pistol-shooting without endangering his own safety, and DESTRY RIDES AGAIN astutely reflects the harsh cynicism (back-shooting is the new norm for law-enforcers to kick the bucket) in the line of law enforcement that is quite ahead of its time.
As per usual, audience can always bank on Stewart’s aw-shucks geniality and Dietrich’s assertive allure for some quality time, and among the second fiddlers, Mischa Auer is a gas as the henpecked husband of Ms. Callahan, infatuated with Frenchie, but also miffed for being only a substitute of his wife’s deceased first husband, he is vindicated at last, but what about Frenchie? It seems that a woman of her profession, temperament and appeal can never merit a sanguine ending. Elsewhere, the deployment of a collective, implacable momentum of womenfolk is novel for its time, but is too rashly executed to finish off the story, which has regressed to the genre’s traditional (retribution and quick on the draw moment), soppy (a man to die for, yet Frenchie's gesture of smudging the lipstick before a final kiss is hard to malign), low-rent (chaotic mob action) fanfare without much contrition or hesitation, still, it is a curate’s egg.
referential entries: Billy Wilder’s A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948, 6.8/10); Mel Brooks’ BLAZING SADDLES (1974, 7.9/10).
